When it comes to our brain health, both gray and white stuff matter. The brain's white matter is made up of all the connections linking together the brain's working neuron cells, which are collectively known as gray matter. Traumatic brain injuries and concussions have long been known to contribute to white matter injury, which breaks down the connections between the brain's neurons and is associated with dementia. But more recently, subconcussive repetitive head impacts-like the kind of hits experienced by football players-have also been attributed to causing white matter injury.
Now, for the first time, researchers from Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center have discovered a link between dementia, white matter, and the neurodegenerative disease CTE in former American football players. Published today in JAMA Neurology, it's one of the first studies to reveal the biological mechanisms that link years of playing football to white matter injury, which might contribute to dementia in people with CTE.
The Brink spoke with the study's lead researcher, Michael Alosco, a BU School of Medicine assistant professor of neurology and codirector of the clinical cores at BU's Alzheimer's Disease Center and BU's CTE Center, to learn more about the connection between CTE and dementia. Here's what we learned.
This work was supported by grant funding from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a Department of Veterans Affairs Merit Award, the Nick & Lynn Buoniconti Foundation, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Santé, and the Alzheimer's Association.
